


A Cup of Chamomile

by YAJJ



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Again warning tag is only for the original fic, Gen, Just a Number, Just a mom helping her son, Nothing bad here, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17504210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YAJJ/pseuds/YAJJ
Summary: After a very long day, sometimes all it takes to put someone to sleep is a cup of chamomile tea and a sleepy scalp massage. And it wasn't the first time it worked for Chris, either.





	A Cup of Chamomile

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Just a Number](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9537623) by [Ranowa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa). 



> Written for Ranowa and her wonderful fic Just A Number. You will want to read that before you read this. I 100/10 do recommend!! Also totally made up almost all of Chris' girls.

Chris was at the kettle nearly as soon as it started whistling. She didn’t want to make too much noise, or let too much pierce her aching son’s foggy conscious. It quieted soon after being pulled from the stove. Silently, she poured two cups and steeped tea bags in them. She felt so homely—even more than when she was at her home. This felt like way back when, so many years ago when Roy was still a young boy, when bullies wracked his afternoons and, too often, tears wracked his evenings. Before the bar would open, she would sit with him just so he had that constant presence… and sometimes, late into the night, after the bar had closed.

But this was so much worse than schoolyard bullies. 

She hipped the door to the living room open, since her hands were occupied. All of the lights were off except the one lone candle that burned quietly by the couch. Apparently, Roy couldn’t handle the total dark anymore. When Maes had told her as much (because Roy wouldn’t actually tell her anything), she had seriously considered grabbing the old nightlight she had never gotten around to taking out of his old room, but had soon decided against it. Roy was in a delicate state of mind considering…  _ all that had happened _ . Chris did not want to imply that he was weak, or being childish, in any way, so the nightlight stayed where it was at home.

“Drink,” she commanded, voice hard like a snap. She set his cup on the table near his head, and eased into the armchair at its corner. 

Roy looked up, eyes blank. He didn’t even lift his head from where it was nestled atop a blue military jacket—his, Maes’, or Riza’s, she wasn’t sure. He had had a long day, and after spending so long in the hospital, still dealing with automail recovery,  _ and  _ still recovering from his six months away from them all, he simply couldn’t keep up that energy. 

Roy’s friends may have recognized that exhaustion in his eyes, and knew that it was good to leave him to his rest, but Chris knew her son. Much of his exhaustion came from being surrounded by people—friends though they may be—and the combination of that and hard physical labor was too much. 

But Roy was much like her, so she knew how to handle him. A quiet presence, a gentle hand… it could do a Mustang wonders. 

“Drink,” she said again, a little softer. She took his cup and pushed it toward him, waiting. “You need it.”

“...What is it?”

“Chamomile tea.” She shook the cup a little. Tea sloshed over the lip. “It’ll help.”

Roy frowned hard. He closed his eyes hard for several seconds, then shifted his elbow up beneath the jacket. He finally lifted his head. Chris fought back a smile when she saw the way his hair was squashed. 

It took Roy an extra minute to adjust comfortably enough to sit up. His skin was still partially burned open, and his fingers ached, so Chris let him move with no comment. He reached out a shaky hand to take the cup and she passed it, fingers carefully not brushing against his.

The tea swam in its cup quietly, as if he didn’t know how he was supposed to respond to it. He stared into it silently. 

“...I don’t drink tea.”

It wasn’t a refusal of the drink, Chris heard it. It was more of a question than anything, wondering where it had come from. 

“Of course not.” Her eyes crinkled in the corners. She and Vanessa had picked him up groceries while his team worked to get him all moved in, and Chris had thought that some tea would be good to help him calm down, especially since Maes had mentioned on more than one occasion that Roy was having more trouble sleeping that usual. 

The corner of one side of his mouth punched downward for a moment. He stared into the tea for a moment longer, then took a small sip. He winced on the heat but made no comment, taking another quiet sip. 

“It’ll help you sleep.”

Roy hummed under his breath softly, not in answer, only acknowledgment. Just the way Chris did when she didn’t quite know what to say. 

“Thanks for,” he took another sip, “helping. Today. You and the girls.”

“You couldn’t keep me away.”

That one granted her a small smile, so small it was hardly there at all and gone in a second. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course not.” Chris dismissed the statement without answering the unspoken  _ why _ . She thought the answer was plenty clear, but since his release, Maes found Roy doubting and redoubting  _ everything _ . “Vanessa’s missed you to pieces.”

Again Roy smiled, this time a little broader. In their youth, Roy and Vanessa got along splendidly. They had both come to Chris’ earlier than most would, and both at the loss of their parents, although Roy had come markedly younger. They bonded like brother and sister. Before she left for the evening, Vanessa had wrapped him in a bone crushing hug and then stubbornly refused to release him until Roy  _ promised _ to call her if he needed  _ anything _ . Though Roy was generally a man of his word, he rarely followed through on promises made about his own wellbeing, but he said that he would all the same. Vanessa left with a slight frown, a pinch on his cheek, and a kiss left behind there to heal. 

“...Missed her too.”

Chris fought back a small smile of her own. “She’d be happy to know that.”

He hummed and shifted around with a wince of pain. He worked damaged feet up onto his couch to cross his legs in front of him, curling himself together and making himself small. The blanket around his shoulders only further added to his fragile appearance. It had been a long, long time since Chris had last looked at her son, her powerful colonel, her Flame Alchemist, and thought him fragile. At least two decades. 

“Are you supposed to be taking anything?” Chris wondered softly, noting a second wince as he shifted. Roy’s tolerance for pain was almost remarkable, and had surely increased even from then in recent months, but that didn’t mean that Chris wanted to see that tolerance in action. A few bruises, even a sprained ankle was one thing—this was a whole other thing entirely. And  _ this _ was wholly undeserved. 

“Not now,” Roy said softly, like he was holding a breath. “This is just… normal, with automail. Ed said.”

She didn’t think it was normal for automail fingers to hurt flesh feet, but chose not to say so. His feet were healing, he claimed. Probably never would fully, but they were getting there, and that was the most she could hope for. “Knock back a pint or two and you won’t feel it at all.”

Roy barked a soft laugh at her grim humor and nodded. “Maybe later,” he replied, a look glinting in his eyes that Chris didn’t much like. 

Chris let the silence hang though, comfortable. She and Roy were painfully alike, both introverted to a fault, finding comfort in the silence, which was why she didn’t speak up. Forcing conversation that they didn’t feel was pointless, and would do more harm than good when Roy needed the silence to ease out of a long day of  _ people _ . 

Instead she sat and sipped her tea, peering around the dark new apartment. It was in the same building as Roy’s other had been. The landlord remembered him as fondly as one could remember a reliable rent check, and seemed almost apologetic that they had to “let him go” the first time. Chris knew in her heart that that wasn't the case, that the apartment sat empty and had been in need of an occupant. An empty apartment made no profits, so when Maes called asking if there was anything available, both Roy and the landlord had jumped at the chance… 

Still. Let any of them believe what they like. Roy had a home now. That was what mattered. He was surely welcome back with her, but having so many people around and, however Chris tried to paint her business, surrounded by the oppressive fog of  _ sex _ …

Well, Chris wouldn’t do that to him. The offer was there, always there, but she wouldn’t verbally extend it until she knew that he needed it. 

This apartment was smaller than his other. Not by much, but she thought the bedroom had shaved off a few extra feet, and the kitchen was little more than a matchbox. Roy didn’t seem to mind much, since his old apartment had scarcely been filled anyway, but Chris hadn’t gotten a look at the lease, and she was going to have words with the landlord if he was paying any more than he had paid at the last place. 

Obviously, there was still work to be done. Vanessa and Mia had only been allowed so much creative freedom in the place (and they had exercised what little they had to the fullest extent) to make it as homely and manageable as possible. Chris doubted that Roy would put too much care into the look of the place after today; he wasn’t a material man. The most he clung to was the coat he was resting his hand on, his spark gloves, and his watch, all of which he could keep on his person.

Chris glanced back over to her aching son in time to see him fight back a hard yawn, a spectacle since both his hands were in use. She fought back a smirk (and the yawn responding to his), and said, “you’ve been pushing yourself all day. If you have to go to work tomorrow, maybe it’s time to turn in.”

His face turned down with a grimace. Chris couldn’t tell if it was because of the idea of sleep or work, but she decided that it was work, because she didn’t want to think of what the former could mean. He tossed his tea in his cup, then tossed the rest of it back with a wince that looked painful on its own, let alone what caused it. “...Maybe.” 

Chris heaved up out of her seat with only the little bit of difficulty that was coming with age. Roy disentangled his feet from his couch, accepting her extended hand with only the slightest hint of a frown. 

“I’ll walk you to the door,” he said quietly, politely, not knowing that Chris had no intentions of leaving—not quite yet, anyway. Jess had a handle of the bar, she always did when Chris was away, she’d manage for the night. 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I can’t—“

“ _ Don’t. Be. Ridiculous.” _ This time her words were sharp like a smack but soft like velvet. She was not leaving.

Roy eyed her, his eyes shifting nervously, then shrugged weakly. “Do… what you want.” 

“Someone’s got to make sure this all gets cleaned up.” And that he got safely into bed and actually slept, but she didn’t say that aloud because he didn’t have to know her thoughts. 

“No, that’s—I’ll do it in the morning.”

Chris shot him a look that asked ‘ _ will you really? _ ’, and the sheepish look he shot back told her that he got the message loud and clear. “There isn’t much,” she said instead. “You go get into your pajamas and I’ll finish cleaning up.”

Roy opened his mouth to admonish her again, but must have found that he didn’t have the energy. He rubbed a hand over his face, two metal fingers glinting in the candlelight, and sighed. “You don’t have to treat me like a little kid, Mom. I’m fine. It’s been three months now.” 

That was all well and good, but Chris just couldn’t believe him. Roy had always, even in youth, had a very funny definition of ‘fine’. And acting on that definition had gotten him in trouble more than a few times over the years. 

“I’m just…  _ worried _ ,” Chris said, a fact for his ears alone. It was one thing to show her worry, her deep aching  _ fear _ that he wouldn’t come out of this alright, not without her at his side, even knowing he was the strongest man that she knew and she had raised him to never give up and never back down—even in the face of all this. It was a whole other to  _ tell _ the world, even just  _ her _ world, that there were some nights she didn’t sleep for fear of missing something that would lead her son home. “Can’t you let an old woman worry about her children?”

Roy snorted softly, the beginnings of a laugh that Chris hadn’t heard in over nine months. “You’re not old.”

“These wrinkles you’ve given me say otherwise.”

“You  _ can’t  _ be old,” Roy went on. “Because if you're old, then I’m old. And I  _ can’t  _ be old. I’m only 30.”

“Only.” Her heart clenched for a moment. It wasn’t too long ago that she hadn’t thought he would hit 30. “Your Fullmetal may disagree.”

“My  _ Fullmetal _ would disagree with me on the color of the sky just to piss me off.”

Chris chuckled softly. She had heard many a story on the escapades of the Fullmetal Alchemist and the somersaults he would do just to get on Roy’s nerves. The Fullmetal Alchemist—a boy Roy was so proud of, whose goals were the only that Roy wanted to see accomplished nearly as much as his own and so would do most anything to assist him on the sidelines (a fact for her ears alone)—had only been introduced to Chris earlier that day, because they had stopped in to help Roy move in before catching their train to head north. Chris had spoken maybe ten words with the boy and his brother, but the boys had spent all the time that they helped keeping up playful banter. The brother routinely apologized, which Chris found equally amusing. 

She scooped up the cups and nodded her head in the direction of Roy’s bedroom. “Go on,” she said, “go to bed. Katlin should have made up your bed. Bea bought you the most wonderful new sheets.”

“...Oh? I’ll have to remember to pay her back.”

“Don’t even  _ think  _ about it. Think of it as a late birthday present.”

Roy made a soft noise of discomfort, shifted his weight, winced. Then, softly, he said, “thanks, Mom. For, um, all of this. Helping. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Chris almost said “and I, without you,” but she had already experienced six months without him and frankly, she didn’t want to think about it. Instead, she said, “go to bed.”

After another moment, as if deciding if Chris was seriously going to clean his apartment while he slept, he went with it. “G’night.”

She waved him off and brought the cups back into the kitchen to rinse out. The nice thing about working with so many people to get him moved in—and especially with one Riza Hawkeye—was that there was precious little left for Chris to actually clean. A few dishes, sweep the floors, wipe down countertops, find a few things homes, little else beyond that. She was done in a split second, so she went out to the living room to sit and wait to make sure his rest was even.

At least, until she spotted the navy blue military coat nestled perfectly atop the couch, forgotten about. She picked it up and shook off a few loose particles. Roy had been dragging this around all day, wearing it around his shoulders like a security blanket or sat in his lap when he needed to rest. She hadn’t honestly seen it leave his space since the day began. 

She smiled with one side of her mouth fondly and tucked it beneath her arm. Give him a few minutes and she could bring this in to make sure he had it and check on him in the meantime. 

She knocked solidly on the door, once those few minutes had passed and she heard nothing from inside. There was a moment, a sigh, then she was allowed in. 

Roy was laying on his back on the bed, a few pillows tucked up beneath his back, looking for all the world like he had little intention of sleep. His arms were bare and if she had to guess, he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. Roy wasn’t really one to go shirtless in bed, not from what she remembered at least. But then, he always complained about being too hot, and that was one remedy. 

“You going?” he asked softly, not exactly a dismissal but definitely sounding like he hadn’t expected to see her again this evening.

“Not quite yet.” She dusted at the jacket in her arms again. “You left this on the couch, I thought you might want it.”

“Ahh—“ Roy sat himself up with a soft wince, considering the jacket. “Yeah, thanks.”

Chris handed it over without a word, eyeing him, eyeing the way that he splayed it over his lap like a child's favorite blanket. He picked at loose threads with metal fingers, then slowly made to lay back. 

But Chris knew, deep in her heart of hearts, that he wouldn’t sleep. And she couldn’t stand there, knowing that, and do nothing for him. 

“Scootch.”

“What?” Roy shot her a bewildered look, but that was all the time it took for her to stride over and push his pillows aside. She took a seat at the head of the bed and made herself comfortable. Then, without an ounce of condescending, only a genuine offer that she hadn’t extended in probably twenty-three years, she patted her lap with both hands. 

After all, there was one thing that always used to put young Roy Mustang to sleep after he had been wracked by nightmares and fear of monsters under beds. He loved the way it felt to have fingers trailing through his hair, tips dragging gently across his scalp. It used to work when nothing else would. 

Roy eyed her, then her lap, and after a moment he understood. “...Aren’t I a  _ little _ too old for that?”

Chris snorted. “You’re never too old for something like this, Roy Mustang.” Especially not after all he’d gone through. She slipped her rings into her pockets and patted her lap again invitingly. And surprisingly… that was all it took. 

Roy, after another moment, drifted downwards and nestled his head on her thigh. His face was a little red, but no one was here to see and Chris was an expert secret keeper so no one would know, so the blush faded after a bit of time. 

She silently worked her fingers through his hair, the same way he had liked it when he was small. His hair was still a little uneven from when he had apparently given himself a haircut in Resembool, but it was growing into something mostly unnoticeable. Alyssa loved to mess with hair; maybe she could convince Roy to visit them at the bar so she could fix him up. 

It took a small amount of time, but soon Roy’s eyes started drooping like when he was young, unable to resist the pull of a sleepy scalp massage. He was fighting it, clearly, attempting to salvage a bit of his own pride, so Chris kept up her ministrations. He wouldn’t last long; he never had. 

And sure enough, not much later, his eyes closed for the last time. The tension in his shoulders loosened and his mouth fell open a fraction of an inch. An even breath passed through his mouth—he was asleep. 

It took only a small amount of maneuvering to get out from beneath him and fit a pillow in her place. He lifted a bare, scarred arm to clutch at the pillow and sighed in his sleep. Chris smiled.

“Good night, Roy Mustang,” she said softly, brushing his messy bangs from his face. “I hope you know that you’re the strongest man I know.”

She retired after that. Fetched a glass of water and set it at his bedside. Found a match and lit an unscented candle on his dresser so he didn’t wake up to the total dark. Then she collected her things and took his house key so he was safely locked in and the world was locked out. She left a note that said to call her if he needed anything, the bar was always open, then took her leave. She locked the door and slid the key back beneath so he, too, had access to his own home. 

Then she took a step back and took in all that had happened in full. There was a little sticky note on the door—all that was on it was a big heart and Yolanda’s name scrawled inside. She smiled again. 

Roy was moved into his own place. He had been rescued three months ago, had three automail fingers. He was on the mend. There were some things that would never heal, some things she still saw in Asia and Bea that never truly went away, not even years after their rescue, but they became manageable. Tolerable. Asia had promised four hundred kisses (“and no less!”) whenever he wanted them, and Bea said that whenever he wanted to talk, she was ready to listen. He had support like few people had, and that was just from the bar. Nevermind Roy’s team, the subordinates who allowed him every handicap under the sun, the children who had loudly proclaimed that he “wasn’t  _ allowed _ to stop if they weren’t,  _ you told us _ to keep moving forward!”, the best friend who was as much a husband as he was a brother. Roy  _ would _ heal, no matter how long it took, no matter the cost. 

She didn’t want to call him lucky, because no amount of positive luck would ever even allow for the things that had happened to him to happen, but she decided that whatever was in his future, he was set. 

He had a huge family to depend on. 

**Author's Note:**

> Love you Ran! *heart emojis galore*


End file.
